The new version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV just released in the fall of 2016 offers substantial potential to reduce process costs thanks to full Office 365 integration and embedded PowerBI. In an ever more connected world, an old system out of support does not improve systems integration (including Internet of things) or allows for better business processes – the new NAV version makes this argument easy to make.

Yet, we remain in a situation where more than 70% of NAV installations are out of mainstream support from Microsoft. Customers still think of upgrades as having a root canal and Dynamics partners assign a lower priority to moving existing customers to the latest version than they do to new customer projects.

The challenge for partners is that they have delivered the oldest piece of IT their customers have and they are relatively exposed to losing their business to faster moving competitors. So, normally this would call for a strategic action for partners seeking to protect their business, but many partners are still holding back. We wonder why!